Location: Wolverhampton
Era: 1940 onwards
“If I was going to cook a comfort food that reminded me of my Mother, I would make Nana’s meat – I just thought of it as ham – and I would serve it with Nana’s chutney. My Mother made a wonderful chutney which was basically apple, onion, sultana, some spices and other things. We still make it and it’s the best chutney I’ve ever eaten. For the meat she’d buy a ham hock, boil it up, scrape of the scum, boil it some more, then take the meat off the bone, put the meat into a basin, put a saucer on top of the basin with a cast-iron iron on top to press it down and then hey presto, several hours later turn it out and there would be this wonderful ham. It would have a coating of jelly that we’d carefully remove when my Mum wasn’t looking! We’d have it with bread, from a tin loaf, cut into triangles with butter and Marmite on.”
Vivien Small